We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

I think there is something else going on here as well. It's a little bit like Obamacare which required millions of healthy and young insured because they needed someone to pay for the millions of unhealthy and older insured. But with public schools I think what the elite are worried about is white flight. They don't want a situation where free choice allows all parents who actually care about their children's education to abandon public schools leaving behind those who either don't care or simply don't care enough to do anything about it. While the simile I'm painting isn't perfect it boils down to they are afraid this whole free choice thing will blow up into a "racist" thing in some cases.

Yes, some charter schools close. But as the article says, there are public schools which should be closed, but aren't. I have taught at a very good public community college for over 20 years. For most of that time, I have polled my students to see how effective they believe their public education was. Though Texas spends about 10K per year per public school student, the average is about 5 on a 10 scale. And as I have said here before, I have seen the ability of public school grads decline steadily over that time.

There are a lot of reasons why public schools stink (the standardized testing, the strength of teachers unions to resist positive changes to the system, the lack of parent involvement in education...and in Texas more than most states: an unhealthy obsession with extracurricular activities at the expense of academics). So we need to give parents the option to use vouchers to remove their kids and money from failing schools. Why should we accept failure in ANY forced government institution? I find it hard to believe that students will suffer in charter, private or public schools when schools compete to be excellent in order to attract students.

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